Drumnotes

by Carl Sandburg

DAYS of the dead men, Danny.
Drum for the dead, drum on your
remembering heart.

Jaurès, a great love-heart of France,
a slug of lead in the red valves.
Kitchener of Khartoum, tall, cold, proud,
a shark’s mouthful.
Franz Josef, the old man of forty haunted
kingdoms, in a tomb with the Hapsburg
fathers, moths eating a green uniform
to tatters, worms taking all and leaving
only bones and gold buttons, bones and
iron crosses.
Jack London, Jim Riley, Verhaeren, riders to the republic of dreams.